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Abodes Of Evil

Abodes Of Evil image
Parent Issue
Day
21
Month
August
Year
1903
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Death Lurks For Unwary Travelers In Some European Inns.

 

Weird Tales of Gruesome Deeds and Thrilling Escapes - In a Bedroom With a Murderer.

 

"In many years of travel about the continent it has often happened to me to find myself a stranger in remote and lonely spots under circumstances where peculiar terror might have made itself felt," said an English globe trotter to a party of friends in Chicago recently.

 

"But custom hardens one, and, having always escaped unscathed, thanks either to vigilance or to ruse, I have laughed at my misease. Still, I sometimes think back, and with no desire to laugh, on a night which I spent in an Inn on the Spanish frontier in a little seaside village surrounded by a thick pine forest now some five or six years ago.

 

[Image caption: The Woman Found Human Bones.]

 

"In this house I was accommodated with a bed in a large room in which another traveler was lying. He was talkative, as most southern Frenchmen are, and curious as to my business, my circumstances and my future movements. What prompted me I do not know, but in my answer to his inquiries I told him a story of my financial troubles, which, now that I think of the circumstances, seems to me to have saved my life. He was restless during the night and kept getting up to go to the window, and I, for my part, could not go to sleep while he was moving about.

 

"In the end we both dropped off. He had given me his name, a name with which a year or two later the whole of France was ringing. He was tried for a double murder perpetrated under circumstances of peculiar atrocity and in both cases with such a motive of petty robbery that the general opinion was that be must have bad a long familiarity with crime. The murder for which be was convicted was planned and carried out in order to gain possession of a sum of £20, and people very rightly opined that none but a hardened criminal would nerve himself to murder for gain so paltry.

 

"France is dotted with evil houses where murder and theft lurk behind the smiling and hypocritical mask of treachery. In the forest of Chatenay, about three miles from Macno, you may see the ruins of a church consecrated to St. John. 'Not far from the church,' writes the chronicler, Raoul Glabert, dealing with the lawful famines of the middle ages, 'a scoundrel had built a house for the accommodation of travelers, and in this house he murdered all the people who came to lodge. The monster used the flesh of his victims for his nourishment. A man came there one day with his wife and asked for shelter. Having rested awhile, his wife, prying into a closet, discovered a heap of human remains. At this sight the travelers grew pale and made for the road. The innkeeper tried to stop them, but terror lent them force and speed, so that they were able to make good their escape to the town, where they informed Prince Othon of the discovery.'

 

"A great number of men set out, the monster was found in his den, and no less than forty-eight human heads were discovered, remains of travelers whom he had murdered and devoured. He was dragged back to the town, tied to a beam in a cellar and burned to death. 'I myself,' says Raoul Glabert, 'was present at his execution.' From other chronicles also of this period cannibalism seems to have been looked upon by innkeepers as one of the perquisites of their profession.

 

"The French Inn of most sinister reputation, leaving aside the famous Auberge des Adrets, the scene of the exploits of Robert Macaize, is a house which is still standing, though uninhabited, in a mountain pass in Auvergne. This is the Auberge de Perveilhann, known to history as the Auberge des Tuers (the murderers' inn). The building was offered for sale some months ago, and, strangely enough, although less than $200 was asked for the freehold, no purchaser was found.

 

"It seems to me that some showman lost a good opportunity, for the story of this typical evil inn is known all over France. It has tempted generations of sensational writers, and only quite recently a publisher's posters were placarded all over Paris announcing a new book on the subject of this inn. The poster appealed particularly to Englishmen, for the startling picture portrayed the innkeeper and his accomplices in the act of 'dealing with' a family of English tourists, referring to one of the many crimes which, it was proved at the trial, had been committed in the house.

 

"The inn, as I say, still stands and is occasionally visited by tourists. It is a very death trap. The rooms assigned to the wretched travelers have Windows barred with iron. In one of the outhouses is the furnace in which the bodies of the victims were disposed of. It was established that hundreds of lonely travelers, belated in this remote and well nigh inaccessible spot, had been plundered and murdered.

 

"With regard to English tourists, the clew to some of the mysterious disappearances of our countrymen in France which were reported in the London papers at the beginning of last century could no doubt have been afforded by a discovery made at the village of Piscot, on the great highroad from Paris to Calais. In the old days of diligences and mail coaches travelers from the north to the French capital arrived at Piscot toward nightfall.

 

"The house, it appeared, had had rather a bad reputation in former times, but that bad been quite lived down, and the worthy innkeeper, the tenant of this house, was a popular man in the district. Among his friends was the late Mr. Carter, correspondent in Paris of the Graphic, who had a country house in the neighborhood of Piscot. It was Mr. Carter who told me the story of the discovery to which I refer and which was made in his presence. The inn was badly supplied with water, and the landlord employed some men to dig a well in the orchard at the back of the inn. When the diggers had got down a few feet they came upon a skeleton, and, having removed this, a further exploration of the soil revealed to them that they were digging into a very graveyard. The authorities were communicated with, and amid great excitement in the village the orchard was thoroughly dug up.

 

"Altogether the remains of eighteen bodies were found. Then the old people of Piscot began to talk of the evil stories which when they were children they had heard in connection with the house. The bones were removed and solemnly interred in the neighboring churchyard, and there the action of the authorities had perforce to end, for it was evident that the authors of these crimes had long since gone to their last account.

 

"Quite as gruesome was the find made a few months ago by workmen pulling down an old house in a town in the Morbihan district of Brittany, where the flooring of the kitchen revealed itself as hiding a veritable charnel house of human remains. In former days this house had been an inn, but for more than a generation it had been the dwelling place of a worthy family of Breton artisans, good, pious folk who were appalled to learn that for years they had lived and moved on such unhallowed ground.

 

[Image caption: Two Masked Men Entered.]

 

"The instances cited are of crimes committed long ago, but there is evidence that this kind of robbery still flourishes on the continent. Only quite recently we heard the story of an itinerant druggist who was assailed in an Inn near Clermont Ferrand with all the classical mise en scene of this kind of outrage. An unnoticed trapdoor in the floor of his bedroom was raised, two masked men, armed with revolvers, entered and under menace of death forced the traveler to hand over $100, which was his entire fortune. The man escaped and was able at once to lay the culprits by the heels, for the servant at the inn had witnessed the landlady dividing the spoils and helped him to give full Information to the police, so that the story lacks the gruesome element of such tragedies."